been a while!

There are some drills. Dryland, you can put your arm up against the wall as though you are swimming to the ceiling, rotate your body like you would swimming, and practice rotating the shoulder/elbow while keeping the hand flat against the wall. You can also do the same thing with a lat pulldown machine, work on keeping the elbow above head level as you catch, then pull the elbow, forearm, and hand in the same plane towards your feet. The idea is to help create muscle memory. In the pool there are some devices that can force you to do that to create any propulsion. As it is now, you are kind of fooled into thinking you are gripping water because you feel pressure on your hands. The problem is the pressure is not straight back, and the forearm may be even less vertical than the hands (you ideally get the majority of propulsion from the forearm). Some drills which take the hand out of the stroke force you to get the forearm in the right direction in order to feel resistance against the forearm. One is the fist drill. Just swim with closed fists (don't clench too hard, you aren't trying to create strain in the forearm). Finis has a device that you hold in your hand which essentially does the same thing (called PT paddle). Another is the technopaddle, which Tom Topolski (in this forum) developed. It takes the hand out and helps drop your forearm into proper position. There is also the Finis forearm fulcrum which basically locks your wrist so your hand and forearm have to be in the same plane. There are other variations, like holding a ping pong ball in each hand between the thumb and index finger, leaving only the last 3 fingers to engage in the stroke (I like this drill a lot). One thing I find helps me is to think of the initial catch as a gentle drop of the wrist and forearm, keeping the elbow in front. It should be a relatively relaxed and slow part of the stroke and should begin shortly after your other recovery arm exits the water. Of course your elbow has to be in a reasonable position to do this otherwise the forearm can't drop and you end up actively trying to push the forearm down. So practice extending with that internally rotated shoulder (not overly so, again just so the elbow faces the side wall) but keeping the hand facing the pool bottom. Good luck.

There are some drills. Dryland, you can put your arm up against the wall as though you are swimming to the ceiling, rotate your body like you would swimming, and practice rotating the shoulder/elbow while keeping the hand flat against the wall. You can also do the same thing with a lat pulldown machine, work on keeping the elbow above head level as you catch, then pull the elbow, forearm, and hand in the same plane towards your feet. The idea is to help create muscle memory. In the pool there are some devices that can force you to do that to create any propulsion. As it is now, you are kind of fooled into thinking you are gripping water because you feel pressure on your hands. The problem is the pressure is not straight back, and the forearm may be even less vertical than the hands (you ideally get the majority of propulsion from the forearm). Some drills which take the hand out of the stroke force you to get the forearm in the right direction in order to feel resistance against the forearm. One is the fist drill. Just swim with closed fists (don't clench too hard, you aren't trying to create strain in the forearm). Finis has a device that you hold in your hand which essentially does the same thing (called PT paddle). Another is the technopaddle, which Tom Topolski (in this forum) developed. It takes the hand out and helps drop your forearm into proper position. There is also the Finis forearm fulcrum which basically locks your wrist so your hand and forearm have to be in the same plane. There are other variations, like holding a ping pong ball in each hand between the thumb and index finger, leaving only the last 3 fingers to engage in the stroke (I like this drill a lot). One thing I find helps me is to think of the initial catch as a gentle drop of the wrist and forearm, keeping the elbow in front. It should be a relatively relaxed and slow part of the stroke and should begin shortly after your other recovery arm exits the water. Of course your elbow has to be in a reasonable position to do this otherwise the forearm can't drop and you end up actively trying to push the forearm down. So practice extending with that internally rotated shoulder (not overly so, again just so the elbow faces the side wall) but keeping the hand facing the pool bottom. Good luck.